


Once a Lifetime

by TrekFaerie



Category: Mary Poppins (1964)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Alternate Universe - Historical, F/M, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-28
Updated: 2014-09-28
Packaged: 2018-02-19 03:18:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2372573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TrekFaerie/pseuds/TrekFaerie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>But I feel what has happened, has happened before.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Once a Lifetime

When he first meets her, he’s a guttersnipe in Babylon, swiping wallets and jewelry with a band of similarly puckish rogues. She’s a fine, proper lady—she always is, every time—with a sullen, sad-eyed prince clutching at her robes. He finds himself reaching for her robes as well—but finds his ear pinched and twisted before he can.

“Our paths are not meant to cross,” she says, voice stiff and flat, though with a hint of her later joy. “We’re not meant to be.”

Though he’s still young, he knows what she means. He’s of what they will later, much later, call the Unseelie court, while she is Seelie. He crawls in dark places; she dances in the light. He understands.

That doesn’t stop the yearning.

He never sees her more than once a lifetime, and that’s only if he’s lucky. The world is covered with needy children, and, even before he grew and matured, he could never be one in her eyes.

When they finally speak, truly speak, he’s a young man, a pickpocket in Niani. He finds himself separated from his gang and staring into the eyes of a beautiful young governess; he had seen her with the Mansa’s sons. He almost doesn’t recognize her, but he recognizes the pain as she twists the hand that had slipped into her kaftan.

“You really must put your talents to better use, young man,” she says, and he feels saddened that he doesn’t know what happenstance put a lilt into her words since the last they spoke. “You worry me.”

“How can I worry you,” he says, and the defensive tone surprises him, “when you don’t even know my name?”

A silence. He gets his first smile from her—first of many. “Mary Poppins,” she says, though she doesn’t say that, because her name is only Mary Poppins once, and that time has not happened. She says her true name, which, at one point, will sound very much like Mary Poppins.

“Bert,” he says, and it’s quite the same.

“Well, Bert, now that I know your name, I can properly worry about you.” The second smile. He feels a glow inside himself.

It’s not easy for the fey to gain or lose luminosity, and everyone is quite shocked when he, of everyone, does. They make good friends, though, everyone says. She brings out his light, his kinder jokes and teasing; he brings out her dark, her sterner lessons and childish tricks.

But, there are needy children.

 _Don’t stay away too long_.

And he’s never been one. Except when it comes to her.

**Author's Note:**

> Long story short: Watching the movie 500 times on a Disney cruise made me headcanon that Mary and Bert are fey and have existed since time immemorial. I needed to have it exist.


End file.
